Choose Me, Cowboy

by Barbara Ankrum

  “You smell really good,” he murmured against her hair. “What is that?”

  Clutching the wooden door behind her, she tipped her face away from him. “I’m warning you.”

  “Is that the same perfume you used to wear? Right here, wasn’t it?” He dropped his mouth down to a spot below her ear, that place he remembered used to make her lose it. He nipped at that spot gently with his teeth and a quake rolled through her.

  “Chanel,” she breathed so quietly he almost missed it, and she tipped her head back against the door giving him access to more.

  And not being a fool, he took the opportunity to slide his mouth along the ridge of her throat and up her jaw.

  “I like it,” he murmured, but in truth, he’d been hard all night for her and the close-up scent of her skin was like a drug. “You remember this, Kate? I do.” He exhaled against her throat. “God, I do.”

  He took her face in his hands and pulled her to him, kissing her as if this would be the last time. His mouth slid against hers, taking, tasting what he’d wanted to taste all these years. She made a small sound of protest as she pushed against his chest, but a moment later, her fingers clutched his shirt and she relented, kissing him back. Her soft lips—oh, yeah, he’d never forgotten them—opened to his with unexpected hunger, and the door banged against the wall behind it. He tasted wine on her tongue and anger in the way hers did battle with his. But she flattened herself against him, wanting more.

  He forgot the risks of touching her this way again, the years it had taken him to pull himself back from the loss of her last time. Because all he could think about now was how right they felt together after all these years. How perfectly right.

  For a heartbeat, her arms went around his neck, then, just as quickly, fell away as if touching him that way had betrayed her restraint somehow. With his knee braced between her legs he felt her knees buckle slightly before she slapped her hands behind her to support herself against the door.

  She broke the kiss. “Stop!” she breathed, breathless, turning her head away from him. “Stop doing that.”

  He tipped his forehead against her temple, breathing hard before he stepped back away from her, locking his thumbs in his back pockets so he wouldn’t be tempted to touch her again.

  She glared at him, her eyes filled with a myriad of emotions: accusation, raw hunger and confusion. And those were just the ones he understood.

  He didn’t try to explain himself. He let the kiss speak for itself.

  She clapped a hand on his chest, a gesture halfway between a push and tug. And with a thousand arguments on the tip of her tongue, she was gone.

  Chapter Three

  The kindergarten playground at school was separate from the larger playground and backed up to a fence that separated that yard from Main Street. Shaded by large trees and bordered by a grassy lawn, the climbing structures were crowded with children as Kate and her fellow teacher, Janice Brinker stood together, watching the shrieking children chase each other around the yard. Janice had a few years of teaching on Kate and was pretty in a girl-next-door kind of way. But she’d come from Chicago and dressed like a big city girl and Kate adored her.

  “I heard,” Janice told Kate, looking glum. “Bette Moynihan s coming back earlier than she expected. In two days? Wasn’t your gig supposed to be until November?”

  Kate nodded with a sigh. “It’s a miracle. I guess her mother’s broken leg healed faster than they thought.”

  “I’ll miss you. So will they,” Janice said, staring off at the children on the playground. “Unemployment sucks. Maybe they’ll find you another spot in another classroom.”

  Kate sighed. “A day here and there, I suppose. But that’s not going to pay my rent.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Apply elsewhere. Maybe another city. Maybe Missoula.” She shrugged, leaning her head back to absorb some sun. “There’s a whole dating pool there I haven’t dipped a toe into for years.”

  Janice chuckled. “But leave Marietta? Your whole family is here.”

  Kate nodded, wondering if that wasn’t part of the problem. “Maybe no one’s meant to be in one place too long. Especially a town this small. This place is feeling a little crowded suddenly.”

  Cutter, wearing his neon-green cast, now covered with drawings and happy faces, darted around the swings, playing tag with two other boys. “You’d never guess that two nights ago, he was in the ER”

  “Lucky he didn’t break worse than his arm, from the sound of it,” Janice said as they watched Cutter Scott collide with another boy in true Cutter fashion. The boys fell into a pile and rolled on the thick protective matting, laughing.

  “Boys,” Kate said.

  “They will be,” Janice agreed.

  “What about Caylee?” Kate asked. “She seems...quiet.” The child was sitting by herself in the sandbox drawing circles in the sand.

  “She is. Sweet girl. But I think she’s hungry for something. Female attention would be my guess. She’s the only girl in a very male household, you know. All that testosterone...”

  Yes, she knew. Her own pheromones were still tingling in reaction.

  “Cutter’s dad had just left a teachers’ conference with me the other night when Cutter took his fall. I missed the whole thing. That was the first time I’d met him. He was, um, nice.” Janice leaned against a concrete wall with a sigh. “And he’d give Charlie Hunnam a run for his money.”

  Kate shot a wide-eyed look at her.

  “What? I’m married, not blind,” Janice said with a chuckle. “I had to force myself not to gawk at him.”

  Kate grinned and looked away. She knew the feeling. But she wasn’t ready to talk about Finn yet. She was hardly even ready to think about him. “You and a thousand other girls.”

  “You met him. You drove him to the hospital, I hear. You don’t agree?”

  She opened her mouth to answer, but one of the school secretaries, Mabel Kramer, poked her head out the door of Janice’s classroom just then and called, “Phone call in the office for you, Janice. It’s your husband. He says your cell is turned off.”

  Janice glanced down at her phone, which was, indeed, set on mute. “Darn! I’d better go call him. He’s been waiting all week to hear about a promotion at work. You okay here for a couple of minutes alone?”

  “Sure. Go on.”

  After Janice disappeared into her classroom, Kate took a stroll around the playground. The children weren’t the only ones who loved this time of day. Kate appreciated the break and the warm September breeze that tugged at the nearby trees as her thoughts strayed to the man who had been barging into her mind like this for days.

  She didn’t need Janice to remind her about Finn Scott’s uncanny effect on womankind. He didn’t even have to try to look hot, which was, she supposed, part of his appeal. His sexiness was effortless and unaffected. Women simply couldn’t help themselves around him. God knows, the other night, she couldn’t.

  She’d allowed him to breach her defenses. Big mistake. Big, big mistake. Case in point: the womanly parts of her that had ached for hours after she’d left.

  For instance, just remembering that knee-buckling kiss—right now—caused her nipples to harden into tight little buds.

  Stop that right now! Stop thinking about him!

  She gave her long hair an irritated flick over her shoulder. Think of something else. Think of Cree Malone and the tongue lashing he gave your cheek.

  Disturbingly, that worked.

  Better.

  She let out a breath. After all, she’d already allowed herself to lose several perfectly good nights’ sleep over their little encounter the other night and the confusing way things had ended. Far better to nurture her anger with him than to allow those feelings to dissipate in a haze of unwanted lust.

  And thoughts of his mouth sliding against her skin.

  She blinked and throttled her thoughts. For all her hastiness, possibly jumping to wrong conclusions the other nigh
t, the problem, she decided, was that she needed closure. A once-and-for-all, get-him-out-of-your-heart kind of closure. Anyone who knew her well knew she wasn’t a wrap-things-up-neatly kind of girl with men, and usually kept things light enough that no such messiness was required.

  But if she were being honest, the Kate that never needed closure, the serial dater, the girl who inspired interventions, had evolved from the girl who still felt bruised by Finn’s leaving six years ago. And deep down she feared that feeling of not being good enough might never go away.

  Two five-year-olds darted in front of her, practically colliding with her and nearly took her out. “What speed do we use on the playground?” she called to them.

  “Slow speed,” they answered in one voice, and immediately put their heads together to conjure up more trouble.

  “That’s right...” Kate murmured, allowing her gaze to wander across the sun-warmed heads of the children to the nearby road.

  That’s when the car parked across the street caught her attention. The black town car had tinted windows that made it impossible to see inside. All but the back window, which was halfway down. Inside the car, an elegant-looking dark-haired woman wearing expensive dark glasses sat, her gaze pinned on Caylee. She looked like she might have gotten lost from a funeral procession, in her little black dress and as out of place in her town car on the streets of Marietta as a greyhound was at a rodeo.

  Kate took a couple of steps toward the fence to get a closer look, which drew the woman’s attention. She made eye contact with Kate for a long moment before she seemed to recognize her. And suddenly, Kate recognized her right back.

  Melissa.

  Finn’s ex-wife in a town car, looking like she’d stepped off the pages of Vanity Fair. Kate had only seen her once, walking down the street in Missoula, months after she and Finn had broken up. She’d been minding her own business, when she’d practically walked into them on the sidewalk. Melissa had been very pregnant and Finn had his hand on the small of his wife’s back, the way he once had done with her.

  The three of them stopped short, right there on the street, speechless, frozen. Awkward didn’t even cover the moment. She remembered him fumbling Melissa’s name and Kate remembered wishing the sidewalk would swallow her up right there as the woman possessively tightened her arm around his. Kate had mumbled something about the weather, while Finn’s expression thundered up like a dark cloud.

  And then, the encounter was over. She moved on. So did they.

  Until now.

  But the woman in the town car? That was Melissa all right, though she looked nothing like the sad woman Finn had described the other night. The woman who had passed out on his couch and abandoned her children. This woman looked pulled together. Wealthy.

  Arrogant.

  Kate gripped the wrought iron fence in one hand and Melissa lifted her Audrey Hepburn chin in a little gesture of recognition, an unfriendly half-smile tilting her mouth. And then...and then she waved five fingers at Kate in a little ‘take that, Bitch’ toodle-loo. The window rolled up and the town car pulled away, disappearing down the street.

  Cold seeped into her, despite the warm day. Oh, no, she didn’t.

  But she had. Girl, you have just messed with the wrong person.

  Somehow, Kate had imagined a fair fight between Finn and his ex. A fight that he could, and probably would, win. But this woman, this new version of Melissa, had landed, somehow, in a pile of money. And that, she feared, was very bad news for him. Money talked in a courtroom. Money that he didn’t have.

  Worse than that, even, was the possibility that this custody battle Melissa was about to wage on him, was just another game to her and had nothing to do with her wanting her children back. And everything to do with winning. And that possibility made her sick to her stomach.

  “You’re pale as a ghost, Kate. Are you all right?” Janice asked, appearing at her side.

  No. Suddenly, she wasn’t okay at all. She dragged her gaze away from the disappearing town car. “I’m just, um...warm. I’m just going to run in and grab a bottle of water. Did you get good news? The phone call?”

  Janice’s face lit up. “As a matter of fact, yes. He got the promotion. So proud of him. He couldn’t wait ’til he got home to tell me.”

  Kate smiled, happy for her. What would her life be like with someone to share things with? Good things. Big and small things. The very idea seemed out of her sphere of reference. How many years had passed since she’d shared anything of herself with anyone, she wasn’t even sure she remembered how.

  Janice bumped Kate’s arm affectionately. “I haven’t given up on finding someone for you, you know.”

  Kate backed away from her, saying, “You always were a sucker for lost causes.”

  “...says the gorgeous redhead,” Janice scoffed.

  “Just to ease your matchmaker’s burden, be advised that I’m on a dating hiatus. So, look no further. Men are off my list.”

  “Hey,” she warned, with a straight face. “Don’t get crazy on me, now.”

  “Thanks for the warning, but you may be too late.”

  She left Janice laughing as she ducked inside the classroom, digging her cell phone from her pocket. She dialed her attorney father’s cell.

  “Katydid!” She could hear the pleased smile in his voice. “To what do I owe the honor of a mid-day phone call? Everything all right?”

  In the background, she could hear the bustle of what sounded like the courthouse. She’d caught him away from his office, which wasn’t unusual. “Everything is just fine,” she assured him. “I’m sorry to bother you. Do you have a second to talk, Daddy?”

  “More than a second. Always. What’s up?”

  “Okay. I need your legal-eagle opinion on something. It’s a Family Law matter. A custody case. I...um...” She hesitated, almost afraid to say what she was thinking out loud. “Do you know a judge up in Missoula named Corillo?”

  ***

  Finn was knee deep in mud that afternoon, pulling a broken fencepost from a mud-filled hole when his cell phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number, but it was local, so he pulled off one glove and answered. “Hello?”

  Silence on the other end. “Hello?” he repeated.

  “Just so you know,” the very female voice on the other end said, “kissing me like that changes nothing.”

  Kate. His heart stuttered and he couldn’t help the automatic grin that curved his mouth remembering that kiss. And the way her arms slid around his neck. And her knees buckled. Most of all, he liked that he wasn’t the only one still thinking about that kiss. “Okay,” he said, waiting for more.

  “And I still hate you.”

  That wasn’t what he was hoping for. “Okay.”

  “Just so we’re clear.”

  “Then why’d you call? And how’d you find my number? Not that I mind you did...”

  “I have my ways. I just thought you should know, I saw your ex-wife earlier today. She was watching the kids on the school playground from across the street.”

  A shot of cold straightened his spine. Damn the woman. “You sure it was her?”

  A pause stretched between them that he couldn’t interpret. “Yes. I’m sure. She was in a town car. Looking very...well...let’s just say she’s not hurting at all for money.”

  Something inside him took a plunge. He should have known she’d land well. But what was she doing here in town? Stalking the kids? Trying to figure out how to contact them? Why didn’t she just come to him? Or maybe she was watching Kate. She’d never gotten over her jealousy of her.

  He blinked and stared down at the muddy hole he was standing in. He tugged his foot from the goo of the hole.

  “What’s that sound?” Kate asked.

  “Mud. Winning.”

  “Oh.”

  An awkward silence stretched between them. A thousand things filtered through his brain to say to her, but none of them managed to make the cut and find his tongue. He pictured her at the other end
of the line, waiting for him to speak, and finding herself similarly speech challenged. He wondered if she was thinking about what he was thinking about. His lower half stirred at the thought.

  “Carry on, then,” Kate said at last. “I just thought you should know.”

  “Thanks. I...appreciate the heads up.”

  “All right then...”

  Another pause, but she didn’t hang up. “Kate?”

  “Yeah?” she said quickly.

  “Do you really hate me?”

  Pause. “When the rational part of my brain is functioning,” she said. “I mean...yes.”

  A smile edged the hard line of his mouth. He could almost hear her twirling her red hair around her finger, contemplating her next smart aleck retort. He glanced up at the sprawl of land surrounding him—his land—and wished she was standing beside him. “I’ve missed you, Kate.”

  “Oh, hey,” she said, clearing her throat. “I’m getting another call. Gotta run.”

  “Okay. See you around?”

  The next sound he heard was the dial tone.

  ***

  That evening, Kate joined her step-mother, Jaycee, on a sunset ride on her parents’ ranchette, called Lane’s End. With her father out of town on a deposition in Helena, she and Jaycee had saddled up two of her step-sister, Olivia’s, gentlest horses and taken the trail through the north pasture toward the glassy smooth Yellowstone River.

  It wasn’t often that Kate rode anymore, even though, conveniently, Olivia ran a riding school out of her parents’ stable. Riding here would always be easy to manage, but her life had gotten caught up in a relentless cycle of work, more work and the long string of men she’d wasted her spare time on dating these last few years. In fact, now that she thought about it, she’d spent very little time just enjoying this beautiful place.

  Which felt, at this moment, like a crime.

  “I like it here. The kids like it,” Finn had said. Of course he did. What’s not to like? She’d be hard pressed to find any country more beautiful than this. But sharing her hometown with Finn was another matter altogether.